Serious Political Commentary for Serious Conservatives

Victims of Success
Who is to Blame for America’s Downfall?
~ A Thousand Years of Irrelevance are Waiting For Us! ~

by Scott Rohter, January 2011

"Government is supposed to be a stepping stone, not a millstone around our neck!"  – Scott Rohter

“We are refined in the furnace, not in the squelching pot”  – anonymous

Who is responsible for America's declining position in the world and the downfall of our economy? By this I don’t just mean the current recession of the last 3-4 years. I mean the near complete disintegration of our industrial and manufacturing base over the course of an entire generation, for the past 50 years, ever since the end of the Korean War. That was when the downfall of our American industrial economy began! It parallels the rise of the Asian “tiger economies" of Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and China. Who is to blame for the predicament that America is in today? Is it “Big Business,” for moving their manufacturing plants and facilities overseas? Is it “Big Unions,” for driving up the cost of production so high, that in order to survive, American businesses have no other choice but to relocate to third-world countries? Or is it “Big Government, ” which is all together to blame for this fiasco by tying American companies up in such a knot of excessive government regulations and bureaucratic red tape, that they just can’t compete in the world marketplace anymore, if they stay in our own country? I’d like to know. "Who is to blame for America’s downfall?"

All that “Big Government” wants is more money. All that “Big Unions” want is more money. All that “Big Business,” wants is more of your money. They all want exactly the same thing, MORE MONEY!   “No problemo,” but just where is all of this money going to come from if we don't manufacture anything in our country anymore? We are primarily a service sector economy, transferring money around from Peter to pay Paul. We don’t generate new wealth the way that we used to.  So where is all of this money going to come from? Also... is that the only thing that really matters anymore to anybody,... money? After all, it’s the same thing that is driving Big Business, Big Unions and Big Government. It is driving them to sell out our country! Greater profits for “Big Business,”higher taxes for “Big Government,” and more income and better benefits for “Big Unions.” The truth is that there is not enough money in the whole world to give everybody, everything that they want! That’s why they just keep printing more of it, (but unfortunately that has its consequences too!) The sad truth is that they are all responsible for outsourcing most of our manufacturing, exporting many of our jobs, and importing a lot of cheap, illegal labor to do the rest of the work that either can’t be outsourced or hasn’t been outsourced yet!

Can I tell you the story of the ancient Romans? They were the victims of success, as the title of this article suggests, victims of their own prosperity. Their story, which is the rise and fall of the Roman Empire takes about 1230 years to explain. It occurred between 753 BC and 476 AD. But if I may, I’d like to boil it down and sum it up for you. Basically, the Romans started out with nothing but ambition, and they ended up with everything but ambition! That's it in a nut shell. They were the undisputed conquerors of the known world. Then they became prosperous and after that they became lazy, and that contradiction of being both prosperous and lazy was their eventual undoing. Their prosperity attracted their rivals, and their laziness couldn't protect them from their enemies. Roman prosperity was the envy of the entire civilized world, but their self complacency could not protect them from their would be rivals! That’s why their Roman Republic dissolved and became an Empire, and why their Empire eventually disintegrated and disappeared in 476 AD. It took 1385 years before Italy was ever reunited again, under King Victor Emmanuel in 1861. It took another 85 more years before a new country, the Republic of Italy would rise up, upon the ashes of the old Roman Republic, in 1946.

The Roman children became so lazy that they wouldn’t even pick the olives in their own family's olive yards or the grapes in their vineyards, so Rome had to import foreign workers in order to harvest their food. That’s where the barbarians came in, in order to do the work that Romans wouldn’t do. Does that sound familiar today? And it wasn’t only farm work that the Romans didn’t like doing. They also didn’t like serving in their own military. And so they also had to hire barbarians to fill up the ranks of the Roman military. And the barbarians kept coming as long as the Romans weren’t willing to work or serve. They kept coming for all of those "good paying jobs" on the farms and in the fields and in the military. Does that sound familiar today? They came for all of the wonderful opportunities, and because Rome’s prosperity was the envy of the whole world. The Bible says, “There is nothing new under the sun. That which is, already was, and that which was, shall be.” Eccl 1:9-10 / 3:15

Soon, the lazy quarrelsome Romans were no match for all of those ambitious and hard working, and also very resentful barbarians. By the way, the simple barbarians that destroyed Rome were more like the Romans who built Rome in the first place, than the actual Romans who lived there! These later day citizens of Rome were no match for the determined barbarians under their capable leader, Odoacer. Neither would these cultured Romans have been a match for their own ancestors, who laid the foundations of Rome in 753 BC.

So what does all of this mean for us today in America? Certainly there are lessons to be learned from the story of Rome, and if we don’t learn them from the Romans, if we don’t learn them from “his-story,” we are definitely going to learn them from “our-story,” the hard way. As the saying goes, “If we don’t know history we are doomed to repeat it.” So let’s try to understand the historical lessons of Rome, and let’s learn them so that we don’t repeat all of Rome's mistakes.

Lesson #1: Success is a double edged sword. It’s fine to be successful and prosperous, but we shouldn’t let it change our character in anyway, or our motivation to succeed. In other words success shouldn’t change us, and our own prosperity should not make us lazy. Those two desirable outcomes must not become our downfall! “Consider the ant and be wise. Consider their ways. They provide meat in the summer and gather their food in the Fall.” – Proverbs 6:8.    It’s not the victory that should determine who we are, it’s the struggle that must mold us and shape our character, both trying our hearts and our minds! We are refined in the furnace, not in the squelching pot!

Lesson #2: There is always someone else ready and waiting to take our place, should we decide that we don’t want to keep our place or position in the world, and it’s probably someone that we would least expect. “E-Tu-Brute?” These are the famous last words attributed to Julius Caesar as he lay dying. He uttered these famous words to his friend Brutus who participated in his betrayal, and brutal murder. “You too, Brutus?” The sense of betrayal and disbelief still echoes down through the ages. He was stabbed in the back by his own friend! It’s such a common phrase, it has even become a metaphor. "He stabbed me in the back!"

For the Romans, it was their olive pickers, the immigrant workers they hired that stabbed them in the back, the simple barbarians who they trusted, who they thought were just coming to pick the olives and work in their fields, to do the work that their children and their own poor wouldn’t do. The Romans probably believed that they could civilize these poor barbarians and assimilate them into Roman society into a sort of permanent underclass. Today we believe that we can absorb and assimilate all of the millions of illegal immigrants coming here from Mexico! The Romans sincerely believed that the barbarians would learn to love and support Rome, but if not, than they could just discard them when they were done using them, and simply send them back across the frontier! The Romans were foolish to believe that either of these scenarios was possible and they paid dearly for their mistake with the lost of their Empire, their culture, and some even with the loss of their lives! The barbarians had other plans. They didn’t like the idea of becoming a permanent underclass. They probably valued their own culture and traditions just the same way that illegal immigrants coming to our our own country today, value theirs. And so the barbarians inside Rome became a fifth column, and they grew stronger as they became more numerous. (What do we hear in America today? The Hispanic community is the fastest single growing segment of our population and the politicians pander to them saying that they are a political force to be reckoned with)… And when the barbarians inside Rome were sufficient in numbers and the time was ripe, then together with other barbarians from outside of Rome’s borders, they brought Rome to her knees! Could this happen to America today? Yes!

The Manchu who once ruled China were far more wise than the ancient Romans were. They realized that they were outnumbered by the Chinese people whom they had conquered, and knowing much better than the Romans did, they realized who would eventually assimilate whom. So they required all Chinese people to cut their hair and wear it in a certain fashion, that would distinguish them from their Manchu overlords. This was in order to preserve their own Manchu culture and identity. The Romans thought that they could assimilate the far more numerous barbarians all around them, and also preserve their Roman culture and civilization too, but the numbers were not in their favor. There were far too many non-Romans to assimilate without drastically changing Roman culture and society. One thing that they could have done differently in order to ensure their survival, which we could also do in America today is, “teach our children the way they should go and when they are old they shall not depart from it”. The successful Romans should have taught their very lazy children better, the value of hard work and the skills necessary to ensure their survival in a hostile world. Instead of doting on them and coddling them, they should have taught them through tough love, like their Roman ancestors had done, what it takes to succeed and prevail in a dangerous and ever changing world. For too long the Romans thought that they were invincible, and that their mighty Roman Empire would never fall. That's what they continued to believe until it was already way too late to do anything to stop it from falling! They were the victims of their own prosperity! They also should have had more reasonable expectations of secure and defensible borders that could have been easily defended by their own Roman citizens.

In the United States of America we have secure natural borders on two sides that are easily defendable, and plenty of loyal American citizens willing to defend them! We also have a very good neighbor to the north in Canada with whom we are at peace and with whom we share a common language and culture. No nation has ever been more blessed or more fortunate, and seemed more willing to squander so much! The only border that we have to worry about is our southern border with Mexico. That border is only about 1700 miles long. It could easily be secured, but we are not permitted to defend it. We are allowing drugs and illegal migrant workers and criminal gangs to spill over our southern border and into our country. We are prevented from defending our own border by globalists and internationalists inside of our own government, and by traitors like Brutus, who don’t even believe in borders, more less secure or defensible ones!

As I said, the enemy is probably someone we would least expect. For Julius Caesar, it was his friends, the same people who ate at his table. For the ancient Romans, who discovered too late what they only wished they would have known earlier,... it was their vine dressers and olive pickers, those immigrant workers and neighbors who lived among them. I wrote this article so that we in America may wake up to the threat we are faced with before it is to late! We are complacent just like the Romans were! I hope we don’t go down the same path as the ancient Romans, and find out to our own chagrin after it’s too late, just how foolish we have been.  

So just how foolish are we? Well, we already have to import migrant laborers to work on the farms in our country, and in the fields to harvest our food! We are already trying to cajole them into enlisting in our military with promises of American citizenship. Remember the Dream Act, the legislation that failed to pass Congress in 2010? That was going to provide a college education and citizenship, for any illegal alien who managed to avoid getting caught for five years. We reward illegal migrants who serve in the military with automatic citizenship! Can anybody say Rome or barbarians? There is already a permanent underclass in our society composed of non-English speaking migrant workers, many of whom are very resentful, much like the barbarians of Rome were! Many of them openly complain about America and Americans. Many say that this country belongs to them. Do you remember the May Day demonstrations that occur every 5th of May? We never used to celebrate Cinco de Mayo in the United States, and the celebrations never included flying the Mexican flag, or others threatening to take over our country! But that’s exactly what La Raza openly says they would like to do! We should believe them, and take them at their word!

Furthermore these illegal immigrants are engaging in criminal activities of all kinds against Americans, ranging from using falsified documents, to taking our jobs, overusing our social services, over-crowding our hospital emergency rooms, over-running our courts, and filling up our jails! They are trafficking in dope, meth., cocaine and other hard drugs that are harming our citizens! We are already a long way down the beaten path of the Romans. And we are also squandering a good deal of our nation's wealth and resources on endless foreign wars just like the Romans did. Never-ending foreign wars wasted much of ancient Rome's resources just as it does ours. The increased military expenditures, and the fact that the Roman army was filled with hirelings (as is ours) who were paid to serve, plus the ever increasing size of the government bureaucracy and the Roman civil service caused an economic crisis of major proportions in Rome. There was inflation. Prices rose and people left the city for the simpler life of the country. The Roman government tried to fix wages and prices in an attempt to stop this exodus, but it was largely in vein. All of this sounds eerily familiar to what is happening in our own country today, and if we don’t get a handle on it soon and purge all of the Brutus’es from our own government, our outcome won’t be very much different then that of the Romans! Disintegration, destruction, and “over a thousand years of irrelevance are waiting for us if we don't correct this!”

"A journalist has no better friend than the truth." - Scott Rohter
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